You always had been required to carry a passport when traveling in the EU Yes and no. A passport is a specific means of a legal identity document, and specific

You always had been required to carry a passport when traveling in the EU Yes and no. A passport is a specific means of a legal identity document, and specifically a passport is not mandatory: you can also use a European Identity Card [1]. This serves as legal identification anywhere in the EU, but not outside. And inside your home country, a driver's license also suffices as legal identity document (for certain uses: in NL, you can use it to identify yourself to the police or when collecting packages at the post office, but you can't use it to open a new back account). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the_European_Economic_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the...